We have already alluded to the change in the feelings of Hadrian towards the Christians in the latter part of his reign. This change was probably occasioned by his bitter resentment at the great Jewish rebellion. It was long before the Roman was able to distinguish accurately between the Jew and the Christian. The irreconcilable hatred of the Jews for the Christians eventually no doubt effected this. In Jerusalem, Hadrian's dislike of the Christians was especially marked by his desecration of all those places venerated by all Christians alike. He filled up the depression in the little valley which separates Golgotha from the Holy Sepulcher, thus destroying the ancient landmarks and altering beyond recognition the old aspect of the venerated spot. The cave of the Nativity was transformed into a grotto sacred to Adonis, while a consecrated wood and a temple of Adonis covered the holy site of Bethlehem. On a portion of the vast enclosure of the Holy House of Zion, once "the joy of the whole earth," arose a lordly temple dedicated to Jupiter of the Capitol. The Roman Emperor, in these sad latter years of his brilliant life, seems to have taken a special interest in dishonoring and destroying the most sacred and revered sanctuaries of that devoted and quiet sect to whose earnest pleading in his earlier and noble years he had listened with seeming interest, and whose votaries he had even protected under the mantle of his Imperial power.
Finally at Rome, and under the very shadow of that enormous and fantastic palace-villa at Tibur, then almost a suburb of the Imperial city—to the erection of which Hadrian the Emperor, sick alike in mind as in body, devoted the boundless resources of the Empire—began that bitter, cruel persecution of the Christians which darkened his closing days.
Tradition, not very copious as far as regards these earlier years of the second century, has preserved for us a fairly long list of Confessors of the Faith who suffered martyrdom under Hadrian. The great majority of these of course belong to the period covered by his closing years. The most distinguished of them was S. Telesphorus, Bishop of Rome, whose "glorious" martyrdom was mentioned especially by Irenaeus.
But the story of another episode of Christian suffering for the "Name," which must be dated circa A. D. 136-7, certainly not long before Hadrian's death, has obtained a far wider notoriety than that of the martyr Bishop of Rome.
The "Acts" of S. Symphorosa in this once widely read and comparatively popular class of literature were well known and highly esteemed. Modern criticism dealing especially with internal evidence has branded the recital with grave doubts respecting its genuineness; but the more conservative spirit which has lately prevailed, by subjecting the "Acts" to a searching critical examination, has largely disposed of these objections, and has shown effectually that none of the circumstances connected with the charge made against S. Symphorosa and her seven sons, or with the trials that ensued, or with the martyrdoms which closed this stern, sad episode, are any of them improbable, or in any way liable to the imputation of being unhistorical; while the discoveries resulting from recent researches conducted by scientific antiquarians have gone very far to establish the substantial truth of the "Acts" in question. The story is as follows, and supplies a good illustration of the manner in which the Imperial rescripts were put in action, with fatal results in the case of the accused Christians.
The jealous and hostile priests and officials of the Tibur temples appear to have brought before the sick and superstitious Emperor an oracular message complaining of the vexation caused to the Roman gods by the daily prayers of Symphorosa and her sons to the God of the Christians. Symphorosa belonged to a respected Roman family which had already made itself notorious by its devoted attachment to the proscribed religion, and had in past years, in the persons of two distinguished officers of the Roman army, contributed its quota to the increasing ranks of the martyr army.
Hadrian himself conducted the judicial inquiry, and commanded Symphorosa, the widow of one of the soldier-martyrs in question, to sacrifice to the all-powerful national gods on pain of being sacrificed herself, with her sons. The "Acts" relate that, undismayed by threats, and proof even against torture, the Roman lady remained steadfast, and was eventually thrown into the river Anio with a stone fastened round her neck. On the following day her seven sons were severally interrogated, and on their persistent refusal to sacrifice to the heathen deities, were put to death in various ways, and were interred together in a deep dug pit.
The redactor or reviser of the present version of these "Acts of Martyrdom" which we now possess, has apparently added little, if anything, to the original recital No eloquent or elaborate discourse by way of defense is put into the mouths of the victims, no circumstances of miraculous approval or interposition are super-added to the simple true story. Very little indeed of the marvelous appears. We are accurately told in the "Acts" that the place where the bodies of the seven brothers were laid was henceforth called "Ad Septem Biothanatos" (the place of the seven who perished by a violent death). As time went on, the original Greek name by which the spot was known in the days of Hadrian, when Greek was the "fashionable" language of the Empire, became the abbreviated Latin appellation, "Ad Beptewi Fratres" and by this name the spot was even called all through the Middle Ages.
And in our own day and time the spot has been identified with striking proof. Some nine miles from Rome, on the Via Tiburtina, the remains of a basilica built on to a much smaller pile have been unearthed, a kind of chapel with three apses, a very ancient form. The deep grave alluded to in the "Acts" could clearly be traced. The little triple apsidal chapel, or more probably the yet earlier and humbler building alluded to in the "Acts," was raised, as was the custom, over the martyrs' grave. Then, as time went on, probably early in the fourth century, the little "memoria" or chapel became too small for the ever increasing number of visitors and pilgrims to the sacred resting-place of the children of Symphorosa; and the large basilica was built, as was so often the custom, adjoining the primitive "memoria." The crowd of pilgrim worshippers assembled in the larger basilica could thus see and venerate the tomb in the little building joined on to it.
The memory of this early martyrdom has thus been kept alive for more than seventeen and a half centuries, and these late discoveries have set their seal upon the substantial truth of the story contained in the "Acts." "He would be a rash man," says a modern scholar of high reputation, "who would venture to tear now from the history of Hadrian's reign the blood-stained page on which this sad record of early Christian life is told."